Bread and salt (Seghers)
Bread and salt. A story by Anna Seghers from 1958 is based on Hungarian events. The text was preprinted on April 14, 1957 in the ND .
history
Hilzinger provides information on the historical background. After Khrushchev had introduced the world to Stalin's "errors" in the late winter of 1956 , the Eastern Bloc was seething . The Poznan uprising pulled the Polish October after themselves. As a result of the Hungarian uprising , the Red Army marched into Budapest.
The story was written around the time when Anna Seghers and Becher wanted to get their comrade Lukács - Minister of Culture under Nagy - out of Hungary with the support of Walter Janka . But nothing came of it because Ulbricht intervened.
content
Those "excited days" claim human lives. District Secretary Sándor is hanged. The dead man is dragged through the village.
Mr. Béla Makay returns from exile in Paris via Geneva, Munich, Vienna and Budapest to the flat area of Bölöny near Drostdorf in order to let “his” farmers from the cooperative work on his estate and on his stud again.
The Makays - more precisely, Makay's father - had already been expropriated by the commune. That was after the First World War (under Béla Kun ). At that time, however, the divine order had been restored by a Romanian battalion. The father returning home from the field of honor was welcomed with bread and salt by a representative of his servants.
1956 is not 1919. The angry commune chases Mr. Makay junior away.
shape
Both in the text and in Hungary of 1956 it goes haywire. Anna Seghers has a flimsy excuse for the chaos: “Bölöny's former teacher, who is now studying in Budapest, told the story. He found out about it from one of his students. "
interpretation
Two examples of powerful narration: "Like the water in the moonlight, his [Béla Makays] soul trembled in memories." "János, the driver of Mr. Makay, his heart gnashes with rage." Nevertheless, the narrative appears to have failed. Because Anna Seghers introduces a confusing variety of Hungarian names into the short text. In addition, reading degenerates into a guessing game. Who is Bela Makay, for example, asks the disoriented reader. The answer is further back in the text: a landlord chased away in 1945.
reception
The author marches in lockstep with the GDR superiors when she sees the above-mentioned Hungarian people's uprising as a counter-revolution . Brandes, on the other hand, reads the story as encrypted text. Anna Seghers always believed in the power of ordinary people to change society.
literature
Text output
- First edition
- Bread and salt. Three stories. (also contains: Die Saboteure . Forty Years of Margarete Wolf) 149 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1958
- Used edition
- Bread and salt . P. 182–204 in: Anna Seghers: Erzählungen 1952-1962. Volume XI of the Collected Works in Separate Editions (still contains The Man and His Name . The First Step. Forty Years of Margarete Wolf and the "Caribbean Stories" The Wedding of Haiti . Reintroduction of Slavery in Guadeloupe and The Light on the Gallows ). 464 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1981 (2nd edition), without ISBN
Secondary literature
- Ute Brandes: Anna Seghers . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1992. Volume 117 of the series “Heads of the 20th Century”, ISBN 3-7678-0803-X
- Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9
- Frank Wagner (Ed.), Ursula Emmerich (Ed.), Ruth Radvanyi (Ed.): Anna Seghers. A biography in pictures. With an essay by Christa Wolf . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2000 (2nd edition), ISBN 3-351-02201-8
annotation
- ^ The spouse of Anna Seghers - Dr. phil. Laszlo Radvanyi - was a Hungarian (Wagner, Emmerich, Radvanyi, p. 50,51).